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Wednesday, 21 October 2009

What a Wednesday...

This morning we woke to some plumbing troubles! Our houses here are not on the mains sewer so we have "treatment plants" in the garden - posh cesspits, in other words. They are supposed to treat the water so that it can be discharged, and the solids are supposed to sink and then be emptied every year to two years. We are not impressed with the sewage system here - the pipes in the garden have not been laid with enough fall and so water (etc...) sits in them, and when certain younger members of the family use too much loo paper, the lack of fall means that there is not enough pressure on the water and its load to push it all through the pipes, and we get a backlog.......we got a backlog this morning and the loos weren't flushing properly. First I had to get the chickens into their adjacent run as the lid of the tank is in their run. I also had to scrape a couple of inches of mud and chicken poo off the top of it, and wedge it open. It needed emptying, so at 8am I phoned the local man who does this for a living and asked for an emptying. His wife wondered if we could wait until Monday and I said no, if he wanted the job it had to be done today. He came at 4pm, and did a good job. But the pipes were still bunged in the garden so I had to pick up some draining rods from a friend and get my rubber gloves out. Managed to clear it quite quickly, thank goodness. I suppose I can now add Sanitation Engineer to my list of experiences!! As we only pay for the water coming into the house, our water bills are quite a lot lower than they were when we lived in town and had to pay sewage charges as well, and the chap charges £65 for an emptying - this is usually once every 8 - 12 months, so it is not bad economically - and he has charged the same for the last 5 years!

The EFG's eyes were giving her some problems so I managed yesterday to get a short-notice appointment for a check up this afternoon. Relieved to report that her eyes are fine and her prescription remains unchanged. The optician did tighten her glasses a little as they tend to slip down her nose and she peers over them instead of looking through them, which I didn't think would be doing her any good. If her eyes continue to cause her pain, we are to go to the doctor, but the optician did say that the recent colds we have had could well have affected her eyes and might take some time to get back to normal. The appointment was at 4.30, so as soon as she got off the school bus and got changed, off we had to pootle. We got there dead on the dot!

Today I have also been a hairdresser - my friend D's little boy likes me to cut his hair! It is not hard as he has a number 3 all over with the clippers. It takes about 10 minutes and I like to do it for him, as he is such a sweet little boy of 7. I fitted that in between picking up the YFG from school and waiting for the school bus to bring the EFG home. I sat and chatted with his mum for a while - we are both school governors, both have girls in the same class at school and both have the challenges of living on a budget, so we have a lot to talk about - too much, sometimes!

Tomorrow evening we have to go to the EFG's school for an Open Evening for the YFG as she will be moving up there next September, and the transitioning has already begun. We go tomorrow for a look around and asking questions, if we want to. Then later in the year, she will go on a supervised day at the college with her teachers and they will spend a lot of time in the library, doing various activities. In the summer term, then, they will go on an unsupervised trip when they take the bus with the other kids, and have to shadow some current Y7s around. The YFG is ready for this, I think, and very excited about it all - I just can't believe that my younger child will be at secondary school within the year!! Then they will both be out of the house between 8 and 4, and I think that my day will be longer - maybe it will be time to look for some career development or a job.......watch that space.......I'll have to work on that.